Culture shapes how we describe facial expressions.

ABSTRACT: From Darwin through Wittgenstein to contemporary scientific investigations, it has been argued humans tend to view facial expressions through a mentalistic lens. According to this view, when looking at someone's expressive face, we see emotion and are unable to describe the face in behavioral terms, i.e., name the details of facial movements. At the same time, however, a growing body of work shows cultures in fact differ in the degree of importance they attribute to mental states and willingness to discuss them. Is this variation reflected in the linguistic coding of facial expressions? To explore this, we conducted two facial expression naming tasks targeting mental states and facial movements with speakers of Maniq (Austroasiatic, Thailand) and Polish (Indo-European, Poland), representin

SUBMITTER: Wnuk E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11405906 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature